I am taking a break from blogging for a bit. Back before long.

 (Meta)search Like Google
LJ author Jonathan Rochkind writes an interesting article about multiple vendor searching, noting that it seems perfectly reasonable that many users want to learn and use only one search interface, but some librarians are concerned that metasearching is dumbed down. 

“At the university where I work, without very much local advertising, Google Scholar has become the largest single source of links to our link resolver product, illustrating how hungry users are for metasearch.”  He asks, “Is it possible to provide this service without any dumbing down? What future direction should metasearch take in libraries?”

Three States and Feds Pursue Social Networking Controls
This American Libraries Online article details the proposed laws to control and restrict access to online social networks.  The bills are largely in reaction to news reports that convicted sex offenders were setting up profiles on MySpace in order to meet unsuspecting minors.

Librarians, as well as parents and politicians are concerned about online sexual predators, but “All the bills fail to recognize that many blogs, wikis, and other legitimate and helpful sources of information on the internet can fall under their broad definition of ‘social networks,’” Deborah Caldwell-Stone, deputy director the American Library Association’s Office for Intellectual Freedom, told American Libraries. “Moreover, despite the requirement of parental consent, none of them address the real need for educational programs that will equip youth to navigate the internet safely,” she added. “The bills seem poised only to drive youth on the internet underground, where they will be far more vulnerable to predators.”

 Google blog announced that Google Apps for businesses is ready to go.  Google Apps Premier Edition  is a new version designed to take on all the challenges presented by companies with complex IT needs. For $50 per account per year, companies get the whole Google Apps package plus many new business-oriented features, including access to Google APIs and partner solutions, conference room scheduling for Calendar, 10GB of inbox storage, extended business hours phone support, and mobile access to email on BlackBerry devices.  All of it hosted by Google so there is no special hardware needed or software to download, install or maintain.

The Standard and Education Editions continue to be offered free.  Google Docs & Spreadsheets has been integrated in all editions so that documents can be shared and edited online.

 Shelfari Groups
Shelfari is an interactive social media site where book lovers can create a personal book shelf, see what others are reading, give and get recommendations and more.  I’ve written about them before here and here.

Now they have officially introduced a new book groups feature.  They say, “Groups help bring together people with similar interests.  So go ahead and create a group for your favorite author, genre, or your personal book club.  Every book group in our system has its own shelf that will help drive discussions within the group.”

Libraries on MySpace:  are they making the best use of of the site?  Take a look at what Woody Evans thinks in this Library Journal article.

In case you missed this, PC Magazine online has a list of The Best Free Software among the thousands of free apps available on the Web.
 

US copyright lobby out-of-touch
BBC News reports that “Internet law professor Michael Geist takes a look at intellectual property protection in the US and finds it somewhat out of step with the rest of the world.” [via Lifehacker]

Steve Rubel at Micro Persuasion uses the Google Newsbar Widget to track topics he likes to blog about.  You can add news to your Google personalized homepage or use the News Bar wizard to display news on your own website.

Custom Search Engines Could Replace Web Directories
Google lets you create custom search engines by defining a list of sites and web pages that are experts on a topic. You can compile a list of those sites and/or use URL patterns to better describe the pages and create a specific search engine. [Google Operating System blog]

 Online child safety initiatives
Keeping kids safe on the Internet is a huge task — bigger than any single government, company or family. Google is working with our industry partners, law enforcement and child safety advocates around the world to address this issue.  [Google blog]

Update your PC for the new Daylight Saving Time
Several links to places that will help you out if you do not have Vista or have not done a Windows update recently.  [Lifehacker]

Software to help you access your del.icio.us (and other) bookmarks from your mobile device.
Read the details from your computer or visit http://mobilicio.us from your mobile browser.

 Open Source Software and Libraries Bibliography
Compiled by Brenda Chawner, School of Information Management, Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand, the bibliography includes announcements, journal articles, and web documents that are about open source software development in libraries. It also includes articles that describe specific open source applications used in libraries, in particular dSpace, Koha, Greenstone, and MyLibrary.  [via What I Learned Today]

Fighting YouTube for ‘Fair Use’
Copyright and Fair Use confusion over a display of a copyright statement within a video on fair use.  [The Chronicle of Higher Education Wired Campus]

Adobe to launch online video editing with Photobucket
The functionality is pretty basic, according to O’Reilly.  Both Photobucket and Adobe are reaching out to the millions of users for whom even Premiere Elements or iMovie are too much. [O’Reilly Radar]

Google Apps for Your Domain 2.0 Expected Next Week
Digital Inspiration’s Amit Agarwal says that the new version will include Google Docs & Spreadsheets but it should not be a big surprise if Google Presently, a presentation tool, is also included in the package.

 Search Engine For All Social Bookmark Services
Now you can search an incredible number of social bookmark services at one time thanks to infopirate.org, who also created a Search Plugin for Firefox. There is a link to it on the Bookmark search page. Just follow the easy directions and you’ll have quick access to bookmark searching. [via Lifehacker]

LetterPop is a free service you can use to create newsletters and announcements that they say is easy, fun, powerful and requiring no software download.  It is still in Beta, and they invite you to test it out. [via Micro Persuasion]

Google to Start Reporting Subscriber Numbers
TechCrunch states that Google will begin reporting the number of subscribers any RSS feed has through Google Reader and Google Personalized Homepage. Other feed reading Google products may be included in the future but these are the two big ones now.

New features have been added in version 4.0 of Science.gov.  You can refine your search queries, email your search results, and sort your results in a variety of ways.  You may also want to use DeepRank, which uses information gathered from the full-text document and may take a little longer, but returns results based on more information.

PCmagazine.com lists Top 101 Websites by category, including “Information, Search & Reference.”

Testing Vista’s Speech Recognition
Google Operating System blog says, to improve the performance of speech recognition, users should perform some training before actually using it. But it’s weird to see that only Internet Explorer has problems, while Firefox is responsive.

EditGrid - New Online Spreadsheet, Better Than Google Spreadsheets
Read/WriteWeb blog notes that EditGrid, the main product of Hong Kong-based company Team and Concepts (TnC) Ltd., is a leading Web 2.0 online spreadsheet service that focuses on online collaboration and interoperability.

 Mozilla Firefox Tops 300 Million Downloads
Mozilla Firefox gains in popularity and is still the strongest competitor for the Internet Explorer.